


so long as we're together

by therjolras



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, What-If, sort of i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 17:40:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7650265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therjolras/pseuds/therjolras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merry and Pippin die on each other a couple of times, but it's okay in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so long as we're together

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this, like, months ago when I watched RTK and got some feels. It kind of flip-flops between book 'verse and movie 'verse a bit, but it reads like alternate universes, I think? I dunno. Dedicated to Jo, 'cause she read it and cried.

**one**

When Pippin finds Merry in Minas Tirith, he has not stopped moving since the last evening bell, since Denethor sent him to the servants for oil and wood for burning. His livery smells of smoke and blood and battle, and he feels it on his hands and face and in the weight of his shoulders. When Pippin finds Merry in Minas Tirith, the city smells of smoke and corpses and Morgul-stench; the light has not shone for hours, days, and the daylight from the south shines on a city blackened with battle. When Pippin finds Merry in Minas Tirith, his best friend is covered in mud and blood and a shroud of grief and holds his arm gingerly, stumbling forward in a daze. Pippin’s heart stutters at the sight; his mind can only register relief. “Well, Merry!” he declares, “Thank goodness I have found you!” and Merry looks up. There are tear-tracks in the mud on his face, and for a moment his eyes are blank before they fix on Pippin.

“Where is the king?” He finally says, rubbing his eyes with grimy hands, and quieter, “And Eowyn?” Before Pippin can reply he stumbles, landing heavily on a doorstep and beginning to weep-- again, Pippin can only think. This has been a day for weeping.

“They have gone up to the citadel,” Pippin tells him, and adds something about Gandalf sending Pippin to look for him-- he remembers that, remembers Gandalf going pale when the bearers mentioned the  _ holbytla  _ and the panic in Pippin’s own throat-- and then he helps Merry to his feet and they go on, foot by foot, on up the hill as Merry fades.

When Aragorn summons Merry back, it is if a boulder has been lifted from deep in Pippin’s stomach and hunger replaces it. They eat and they smoke and Merry grieves, and in the end they go home.

**\-- and another**

When Pippin finds Merry in Minas Tirith, smelling of death in a city smelling of death, Merry is collapsed on a doorstep, pale and cold. In the houses of healing Eowyn and Faramir will live, and perhaps in time they shall choose to live in hope; Pippin, for his part, cannot see past this. He has not been thinking since Eowyn woke and they all discovered at once that Merry ought to be there.

“Wake up,” he says to his friend, his best friend who he barely got to say goodbye to before he and Gandalf were haring off out of Rohan in the dead of night. “Merry, wake up, wake up,  _ please,  _ wake up--”

He screams at one point. There’s a lot of screaming. And crying, and begging, and Merry won’t wake up  _ he won’t wake up _

**\-- and another**

He followed Gandalf out of the city, and Gandalf followed the ghosts. At least, that’s what Pippin’s calling them. He doesn’t know what their proper name is, because Gandalf hasn’t told him, because he isn’t talking. They watch Aragorn dismiss them, the ghosts, and Pippin could swear that he hears a sigh of relief as they disappear. Then Aragorn turns back, and he’s just Strider again, battered and dirty and calm, calm as always. He always reassured Pippin, in the beginning, just because he was so calm about everything. It could have been that he was evil, he was so calm, but it just turned out that nothing evil could sway him. 

“Well met, Gandalf,” he says first, and then to Pippin, “I see you have met with war, and said goodbye again.”

“It was a near thing for a bit,” Pippin manages to reply. Then he ignores all decorum and hugs Strider because, he’s tired and Strider is a safe sort of person. He hears Gandalf snort and Gimli and Legolas share a chuckle, and with his head pressed up against Strider’s chest he can hear a short rumble of laughter, and then he lets go.

“I suppose you’ve been off having grand adventures with the king, while we’ve been shut up in a big dark city surrounded by orcs,” he says. “Awfully pleased with yourself, coming in at the nick of time to turn the tide. Very impressive.” Aragorn grins.

“I suppose we have,” he says. “But I don’t suppose that’s what you’re out here to hear.”

That’s the truth of it, Pippin supposes. He’s glad to see Strider-- and Legolas, and Gimli, and Gandalf-- but Merry isn’t here. Merry was supposed to be with Strider, and he isn’t.

“Where did you leave Merry?” He says. “He’s not with you?” Aragorn frowns a little in response.

“I left him with the king,” he says. “And I trusted Theoden well enough with his care. But I have not seen Theoden since we came, though Eomer is away over there--” he gestures past Gandalf’s shoulder to the battlefield behind them. “We shall have to find them, and ask.”

“Yes,” Pippin says. “We shall have to do that.” 

“Perhaps you shall,” Gandalf says. “And I shall go with you. But Aragorn and company, I think, ought to have a moment to stand still, don’t you agree?”

Pippin supposes he agrees. The three of them look dead on their feet: downsides of adventuring. “That’s reasonable, I suppose,” he says. “Let’s find the king, Gandalf.”

They spread apart as they go, ambling around the corpses of orcs and men and oliphaunts. Pippin loses track of Gandalf at some point; some point afterwards, trying to track the person he supposes is Eomer, he catches sight instead of a lump of grey. 

\-- _ Lorien  _ gray. Grey like the cloak he’s wearing. Pippin speeds up, gathers up the lump of fabric, finds the catch. 

“Merry,” he murmurs.

Somewhere far away, but not far at all, he hears a cry-- heartbreak, anguish, shock and horror and grief and he starts running. “Merry!” He calls out. If the cloak is here, the Merry can’t be far. He finds himself running towards the commotion, and finds Eomer, kneeling with the body of Eowyn in his arms, weeping. Other soldiers of the Mark bear up the body of the king, covered in mud and blood. The body of one of the creatures the black riders rode lies akimbo, head a few feet away; a few feet from that, in the shelter of an oliphaunt, lies an orc with hobbit’s feet sticking out underneath it.

“Merry!” He shouts, and runs past them all-- the dead king, Eomer King, Eowyn, the black rider or whatever’s left of it-- and shoves the orc away, rolls Merry’s body over, begs him to wake up. And Merry’s eyes open, and he says Pippin’s name quietly, a bit brokenly, and inquires-- in all sincerity-- if Pippin is going to leave him. And Pippin remembers the wild ride from Edoras, and Merry’s expression as Gandalf set off.

“ _ No,  _ no, Merry,” he says. “I’m going to look after you.”

**\-- and another**

Merry’s eyes don’t open. There are two voices crying on the fields of Pellenor.

**\-- and another**

When Merry comes to Ithilien, Pippin is abed with a bad case of troll-fell-on-ums. When Merry visits, his eyes light up and they share a pipe and all is well, the king is coming back, and Gimli is complaining about how he never had so many grey hairs before he travelled with hobbits.

**\-- and another**

When Merry comes to Ithilien, Pippin is laid in state with those who fell. There’s talk among the men of a funeral fit for a king-- or an  _ Erni il Periannath,  _ perhaps.

**\-- and another**

The letter came from Rohan, and Eomer, to Merry; another came roughly simultaneously, as if by design, from Gondor by way of Fornost Erain. Both said, in essence, “Come visit before we die.” 

Meriadoc the Magnificent, Master of Buckland, and Thain Peregrin met at Crickhollow to compare notes and to form a plan, because really, what’s to do but get on with it?

“It’s not,” Merry said cheerfully, drawing up his will, “Like we’re going to get any younger.” Pippin laughed and added a line or two and went to get the tobacco, for old time’s sake. They wrote their wills and laughed at the story Merry had heard about himself that morning from a great-nephew (“kilt a dragon, he did, Merry the Magnificent, an’ he was all of five feet tall, he was!”). They made the announcements: their sons became the heads of Buckland and Tukburough, and suddenly Merry and Pippin were nowt but old men and legends.

“We are, though,” Pippin had to remark. “We’re legends. We’re old and poor, but we’re legends, we can’t forget that.”

“You’re right about the old bit,” Merry said blandly.

They said goodbye to their families, the graves of their wives, and to Sam’s family in place of Sam, and off they went. To Bree, and then to Rivendell by way of Bilbo’s trolls, and then by way of Lorien came to Isengard where Treebeard and co. gave them a royal (for Ents) welcome. (It involved a long, refreshing drink and then a similarly long nap. It was very much an Entish welcome, and very much welcomed.) 

When they left, standing at the gates of Isengard, they exchanged a look and bade Treebeard what they knew was the last farewell. And Treebeard gave them both an old, cheery smile and said goodbye, and Merry and Pippin rode on.

Eomer, when they came to him, was white-haired and straight-backed and greeted them as a king and an old friend, and they were with him through the summer, and sat with him as the Eorlingas sang songs and bid their king farewell. The story of Frodo was heard, and of Theoden Ednew who led the charge for Mundburg and fell before the Witch-King, and of Eowyn of the Shield-Arm who cast down the same Witch-King (and here Merry grew very quiet, and Pippin elbowed him, muttering something about legends) and last of all they sang all the songs of Eomer Eadig and his reign, which had been a reign of building and peace and of great deeds for the kings of the west. And in the night not long from Durin’s Day, Eomer passed, the longest-reigning king of the Mark in a thousand years. Merry wept as he had over Theoden’s grave, and Pippin wept, and they rode on to Gondor.

Merry died first, as he would, over afternoon tea. Pippin followed but hours later, in his sleep, and his last words (spoken to a man of the guard) were that “he’d followed Merry this far, he might as well keep on now.”

Aragorn Elessar’s last act as King was placing their beds in Rath Dinen, amongst the resting kings.

“They’d probably laugh,” he added. “But I do believe they’ve earned it.”


End file.
